Taking a cue from North American lawmakers, politicians in the United Kingdom are planning on creating laws to deal with supposed illegal streaming of copyrighted content. The warning came from UK Communications Minister Ed Vaizey in a speech at the Intellect Consumer Electronics in London. In that speech Vaizey said that a "voluntary code of practice" being drawn up by US ISPs and content owners might be a "game-changer" in other countries. And by other countries, he means his country.

"If people are streaming live football without permission we should look at ways we can stop them," he said. "People have the right to earn money from content they create."

While he remained silent on what was decided or discussed at last week's meeting between ISPs and content providers to discuss website blocking, he did say that what is going on in the United States is "leading the way."

"A voluntary agreement may come out of the US and if that does happen it could be a game-changer," he said.

He also said that he found the attitudes of UK ISP's "odd," especially BT and TalkTalk's failed legal challenge to the Digital Economy Act (DEA). The DEA is supposed to prevent piracy using peer-to-peer file-sharing and some website blocking. Of course, Vaizey's comments are "odd" because the law also allows content providers to seek an injunction against ISPs that do not restrict access to illegal streaming sites that contain their intellectual property.

The MPA wants BT to block Newzbin using the exact same system the ISP uses to block sites hosting child pornography.

That case is due to be heard in court next week.

Vaizey closed by saying that critics of website blocking are showing a degree of hypocrisy:

"They [the US government] have been tough but if they took down a website linking to fake handbags no-one would bat an eyebrow," he said. "As soon as it is a site sharing music it becomes an issue about freedom of speech."

Comments

To say that the US is leading the way on anything right now is a joke. It's the corporations/industries that are the ones leading the way: the MPAA and RIAA and others who simply have too much cash to throw around to buy people off to get their way.

I think what he means is that the US, as a whole, are not necessarily leading the way on anything, not that US companies aren't (and as far I'm concerned, companies in the US don't represent the entirety of the US, regardless whether it's the MPAA/RIAA or not).

Aside from that, I think it's rather presumptuious to assume that the United States is "leading the way" on anything, whether they actually are or not.

Ontopic: My main issue with these laws is that they tend to go after the wrong websites. They shut down websites merely linking to illegal content but seem completely oblivious of the websites that are actually being linked to.

Another issue is one that websites such as YouTube have encountered since their inception. It's an issue that arises with pretty much any user-driven website, such as video, image and file hosts.

Google has, on ocassion, been sued for hosting videos [on YouTube] that infringe upon copyright laws. Of course, the argument is pretty simple: It's not Google's fault that their users post copyrighted content without permission, and whilst Google (and similar sites) probably try their best to get rid of them as quickly as possible (okay, Google doesn't, but anyway...) they shouldn't be expected to watch every single piece of data uploaded to their servers as soon as it hits their servers.

Most of these services don't have proactive protection, they don't have a large group of moderators monitoring every video or image that comes into contact with the servers, as that wouldn't be cost-efficient and you'd need so many people to monitor something as large as YouTube (hence why they employ the users themselves to report).

TL;DR: The hosts of the user-driven website shouldn't be the ones the law goes after, the people who are uploading the content in the first place should be. Same premise as those linking to what may be considered illegal.

To use the example in the article: I would compare somebody linking to a site selling fake handbags with somebody merely talking about fake handbags and where you could buy them. It's not illegal for me to know where to buy illegal products (though it might be considered morally irresponsible not to report these places), it's illegal for me to engage in the act of buying or selling the products (or to bear accomplice to somebody else doing so).

Well, it isn't in New Zealand anyway. The US is an entirely different country, with entirely different laws.

I wonder how long until we get a mini trade war going.... at the moment we mostly have the US saying 'this is illegal here, so we can shut down the website world wide'... what happens when a US company following US law has its global presence shut down because it violates another country's rules?

I think mostly the US government is happy about this because they do not see it as possible.. when yahoo auctions was found breaking local rules it only had to filter out individual countries but its main operation kept going. What would the political fallout have looked like if France was able to kick all of yahoo off the net, even for US customers?

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ZippyDSMlee: .....win8 hates any left over hidden install partitions from other version of windows....only waste 5 hours finding that out...its ahrder than you think keeping up with 4 or 5 HDDS......03/03/2015 - 4:44am

Matthew Wilson: I am going to pax east, any games you guys want me to check out?03/02/2015 - 11:23pm

ZippyDSMlee: No one remembers the days of Cinemagic and Cynergy eh? :P, meh even MGS is getting to film like....03/02/2015 - 8:44pm

MechaTama31: I was about to get all defensive about liking Metal Gear Solid, but then I saw that he was talking about "cinematic" as a euphemism for "crappy framerate".03/02/2015 - 8:29pm

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Monte: Though from a business side, i would agree with the article. While it would be smarter for developers to slow down, you can't expect EA, Activision or ubisoft to do something like that. Nintnedo's gotta get the third party back.02/28/2015 - 4:36pm

Monte: Though it does also help that nintendo's more colorful style is a lot less reliant on graphics than more realistic games. Wind Waker is over 10 years old and still looks good for its age.02/28/2015 - 4:33pm

Monte: With the Wii, nintnedo had the right idea. Hold back on shiny graphics and focus on the gameplay experience. Unfortunatly everyone else keeps pushing for newer graphics and it matters less and less each generation. I can barely notice the difference02/28/2015 - 4:29pm

Monte: ON third party developers; i kinda think they should slow down to nintendo's pace. They bemoan the rising costs of AAA gaming, but then constantly push for the best graphics which is makes up a lot of those costs. Be easier to afford if they held back02/28/2015 - 4:27pm

Matthew Wilson: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/02/28/the-world-is-nintendos-if-only-theyd-take-it/ I think this is a interesting op-ed, but yeah it kind of is stating the obvious.02/28/2015 - 2:52pm